Okay, okay, okay. I'M SORRY FOR TAKING SO LONG. I went to Disney and I meant to publish another chapter before I left, but I ran out of time. Thanks for bearing with me though!
This chapter has also been a bitch to write. Like, how do you transition out of one of your favorite chapters? Very awkwardly, that's how. I think I'm going to start writing in advance again so there's more frequent updates like before.
But would you guys prefer more frequent updates and shorter chapters, or longer chapters but less frequent updates? I'd like to be able to do both, but I'm pulling 14 hour shifts here and it's a tricky balancing act.
And THANK YOU FOR READING. It's SO cool to see the views growing every day. I never though babbling for my own comfort would reach so many people! Please do comment and favorite. I love, love, love reading comments and talking to you guys.
Again, if you ever need support, please text GO to 741741. Super nice text support line and very speedy! Like, hardly ever waiting and awesome for people with social anxiety. Stay safe out there, guys!
Last but TOTALLY not least... I'M SEVEN MONTHS SELF HARM FREE!!!! FRICK YEAH!! LONGEST I'VE EVER, EVER BEEN. WOO!!!!
Anyway, on with the story...
To say Casey donkey-kicking Dean had intensified their dynamic was an understatement; both brothers had tried pulling the contents of her dream from her, but Casey changed the subject whenever they brought it up. "It was just a bad dream" apparently wasn't an acceptable answer. She'd tried "clowns and midgets" and "howler monkeys", but that didn't work either, so she stopped trying to make up believable fake dreams and moved on, much to Sam and Dean's annoyance. She could hear them whispering about her when her back was turned. She knew they'd told Castiel, even though she'd asked them not to. He'd starting texting her again, checking up on her or, supposedly, to ask how their hunt was going.
Casey was stuck sitting in Baby while the boys were in a frat house that pounded with music. She knew that she was only fifteen, but what she'd gotten from movies and by questioning college kids so many times was that they didn't particularly care about the corruption of minors. The urge to go inside was intense. She'd repeatedly been touching the door handle, daring herself to go inside. She didn't even want to drink or rebel, especially after Dean had given her that shot of whiskey, but just wanted to be included. She was always stuck in the car while her brothers were out doing the fun part of any job. It wouldn't be a surprise if they asked her to stay in the car while they adventured to the sub basement without her.
Focusing on her irritation, Casey almost missed noticing the drunken couple stumbling out of the house. The girl was tall and brunette and had a full chest and Casey felt a pang of jealousy. Because of her mother and the constant exercising (and the fact that she was merely fifteen, which she didn't seem to consider), Casey's bust was a bit smaller. She figured it was lacking some of what the college girl had, forcing envy to poke its head out of her heart before she managed to shove it back down. She pulled out the neck of her shirt and looked down. Everything looked the same as it had before and she groaned, then tried comforting herself with the fact that she knew she had amazing legs and that it was easier for her than Bigtits McGee to find a swimsuit top. It was a small consolation, but it made her feel better about herself.
Then she realized, while watching the blatantly intoxicated girl hang around the man's neck and watching him sloppily kiss her, that they might be exactly who she was looking for. When they started stumbling down the street toward the sub, Casey started the car and pulled out her phone to call one of her brothers. Considering it was a college party with lonely women and free alcohol, she figured Dean would, most likely, be too preoccupied to pick up his phone.
Sam answered on the second right. "Yeah?" She could hear the music pounding around him and a giggling girl ask him who she was talking to. Casey cringed at the shrill voice and at the thought of her Sammy with a girl. Sam excused himself from the girl, who then asked him to come back, but he didn't say anything else to her. Sam stepped onto the porch but didn't approach the car so he could still keep an eye on the happenings inside.
"A couple just turned the corner. Pretty smashed, I might add. I'm gonna tail them and call you back if it looks like they're going in," she said shortly and hung up. She needed to get off the phone to follow them as soon as possible. Enough time had already been wasted by her jealous brooding. Her and Sam obviously knew it was illegal for her to be driving, but it was necessary and he knew she wouldn't drive like a doof.
She gave the couple a wide berth, knowing they'd be traveling slowly. The girl's shoes were already in her free hand, the other holding the boy's. His walking was far more unsteady than her's. A ball of anxiety tightened in Casey's stomach; these kids needed to go to bed. They shouldn't be out in their condition, especially his. Allowing them to walk into danger would be even worse. In a split second decision, Casey pulled up next to the couple and rolled down the window. "Hey," she said, not wanting to startle them. They didn't seem to notice her, absorbed in their own little blurred world, so she decided to speak a little louder. "Hey!"
The girl shrieked and backed into the boy. When she saw who was driving the car, though, her body relaxed and she giggled. "Oh my Gooooodddd, you scared the crap out of me!" She tittered more, sounding disgustingly like the girl on the phone. Casey hated being underestimated. This chick didn't know that, without even looking in the trunk, Casey had already sub-consciously identified three ways she could kill her while keeping her man subdued. Casey was a force to be reckoned with, and being low balled pissed her off to no end.
But she held her tongue. "Get in. I'm driving you home," she said, shortly. Trying to remember her manners so that she didn't sound like a kidnapper, she elaborated, "You two are in no condition to walk anywhere. You look like you're both about to pass out on the sidewalk, and I have a car. Get in."
The boy glared at her, offended. "We are not. I can take care of my woman," he insisted.
Heat flooded Casey's face. They were wearing on her quickly. "Really? Because it looks like your woman is holding half your weight right now," she snapped back. "So get in the car. 'Kay?"
The girl hesitated before speaking softly, "Come on, Kyle. She's right and my feet hurt." Kyle grunted but got in the car after the girl opened the door. She smiled at Casey, less annoying than she was before. "Thank you. We only live a few blocks away, but he's not going to last much longer, I think." Her voice was gentle, although it peaked awkwardly in several spots where her slurs hit hard, then she chuckled. A real laugh, not a flirty, piercing ring. "Honestly, I don't think I'm going to either." The girl eased back in the seat, allowing her boyfriend's head to sink into her lap, not even registering the fact that she was accepting a ride from a fifteen year old.
Casey punched in the address the girl told her in the GPS and found that she truly was a few blocks away. She drove slowly, watching for drunk kids that should feel the need to run across the street, and soon heard light snoring from the backseat and smirked before her stomach hit the floor.
She messed up the hunt. There could be a couple dying in the sub basement at the exact moment she was chauffeuring around a couple that was only drunk and probably not in mortal danger. Someone could be dying the exact second she was so sure she was helping, being a good person. Her "helping" could be the death of another couple. You're a disappointment.
Casey stepped on the gas until she was ten miles over the speed limit, desperate to get them home. Once she read Birmingham Drive she slowed some to allow herself to skim the house numbers and braked hard once they'd hit 2319. In reality, she'd only wasted a couple minutes, but ghosts didn't need long to satisfy themselves.
"Okay! We're here!" she barked, trying to cover her self-disgust by sounding especially chipper. The girl hiccuped awake and looked around, gathering herself before hitting her boyfriend lightly on the head.
"Kyle!" she whisper-yelled. Kyle groaned. "Kyle, get up! We're home. We gotta get out of the car now, babe." Sleep slurred her words now alongside her drunkenness, practically making her impossible to understand. Kyle dragged himself off her lap and followed her out of the car. Kyle dumped himself onto the curb and curled against the girl's legs. She mumbled something to Kyle, who then reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet to produce a crumpled bill and handed it to her. She leaned back into Baby and for a moment Casey was convinced she was going to hurl, but she just gave a shrill "thank you!" and chucked the money in the front seat. Casey pulled away quickly, not bothering to check the unexpected tip, and parked in front of the sub basement and began to mumble quietly.
"Castiel, please, please, please, get your celestial butt down here. Please, Cas. I really-."
"Casey, what's wrong?"
Casey held her breath so she didn't scream. She knew if he did answer he would've shown up like that, but he still startled the crap out of her every time. "Jesus Christ, Cas," she breathed once she'd gathered herself again.
"Are you okay?" He needed to know. Casey hadn't called him in weeks after hearing his conversation with Dean. He could admit that perhaps he'd gone about expressing his worry toward her in a less than favorable manner, but he wanted to make sure she knew that he didn't think her going on a hunt was a good idea yet. Seeing as she'd just prayed for him, he was becoming afraid that he'd been right and that it was too late to protect her from whatever damage the hunt might have caused.
Casey's lip quivered, but she pushed down every negative emotion she was feeling. Cas couldn't see her cry. He'd tell her brothers and they'd make her go home. The hunt didn't mess her up and she wasn't too weak for it. She'd just made a mistake. She cleared her throat before speaking. "Castiel, I need you to check the sub basement of the Hamilton Hansen building and make sure nobody is down there, please." Her tone was clipped and professional. She didn't have time for him to waste on sorting out her emotions.
Castiel hesitated before flitting away. It didn't take him more than two seconds before he reappeared. "Nobody is there. Now what's wrong?" He highly doubted that Casey had prayed for him to check a haunted basement, especially considering the intensity with which she began to gnaw on her lower lip.
Casey didn't want to admit to Cas that she was a failure, yet again. It was relieving to hear that nobody was dead because of her, but if she'd done her job in the first place she wouldn't have needed to call Castiel. "That's what was wrong. I didn't want to go down there alone," she mumbled, knowing he would never accept that as an answer, but it was worth a shot.
"Why did you really call? How are you?" His tone was sincere enough that Casey felt guilt rush through her. He only wanted to make sure she was okay, he cared about her. Why couldn't she talk to him? Why shouldn't she?
Casey pursed her lips, unsure where to begin. "I kind of screwed up." The admission alone felt like too much was already said, but she had to continue. "I was supposed to be making sure nobody went into the sub basement. There's- there's this ghost, well, we think it's a ghost, down there that's killing couples who go to make out in it. And there was this party, people were drunk and making out and stuff. I was supposed to be watching but this boy, Kyle, and this girl, I never caught her name, were wandering and they were so drunk. So drunk, Cas. I couldn't let them go home, not like that. They were so... So I offered them a ride. I drove them home. Somebody could have died, Cas, and I was driving around drunk people. God, I'm so stupid. I don't know what I was thinking. I wanted to help but I could've caused so much damage. I could have caused death because I wanted to be a 'good person' but I went and screwed up again. I could have killed people, Castiel. Some kids could have died. How- I just- I can't believe- I'm such a freaking idiot!" Casey knew she was babbling, but the words couldn't stop pouring from her lips. She was a disappointment because she chopped herself to bits, she was a disappointment because she couldn't even hunt right, and now she was a disappointment because she wasn't going to cry in front of Cas, yet there she was, looking a fool while an angel of the Lord that should be defending Heaven listened to her spill her guts out. She set her head on the steering wheel, not bothering to cover her face and letting the tears leave spots on her jeans.
"Cassandra, you must know that you aren't any of those things. You were being nice. Maybe you didn't choose the best time to be nice, but you were still being a good person. That doesn't make you an idiot," Castiel said calmly. There was no reason she couldn't trust him, but she knew herself, she knew her flaws. It didn't matter if nobody else saw them, they were still there. But there was no way nobody could see them because they were so glaringly obvious. It was like a bullseye on her back.
"No, but they make me weak," she whispered, more to herself than to Cas, but he replied anyway.
"You told me yourself you weren't weak. I think the fact that you refrained from talking to me for so long proves that you're a woman of immense perseverance." Casey couldn't tell if he was attempting to joke or if he was stating the obvious. She had that issue a lot with him. "Caring for people doesn't make you weak. If that were so, your entire family would be the weakest group of people I've met. You can't believe that's true, knowing what yourself and your brothers have been through."
Casey sniffed. He had a point. And her brothers had been helping people since they were little. Just because they cared about strangers. It was their job to care, and there was nothing weak about those two. Cas cared for all of humanity to the point where he'd fallen several times and even lost his grace for a while, and there was no way he could be considered weak.
"How come I make so many mistakes though?" She sat up and looked at him, taking in his earnest and confused expression.
"'To err is human.' Even angels make mistakes," he reminded her. "All of these mistakes, they seem huge to you, but they aren't. It's not a huge mistake to exchange one good deed for another. You are not a despicable human for having issues with yourself that have given you immeasurable pain. You aren't stupid, or an idiot. And you aren't weak for having a soul and using it for love. That makes you impeccably strong."
Casey had no reason to mistrust Cas. Or Sam or Dean. Maybe it was time for her to take solace in that.